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Unions Double Down on Inserting Critical Race Theory Into Education
Periodically, it’s worth checking teachers union priorities. Such reviews find just how much these special-interest groups are disconnected from mainstream opinions on the role of schools in society. We also find how singularly focused they are on political fads, such as the toxic ideology of critical race theory, instead of improving the state of American education.
The most recent example of this leftist mission creep is a slate of critical race theory-based resolutions the National Education Association—the country’s largest teachers union—adopted at its 2021 annual meeting earlier this month. The NEA adopted New Business Item 39, a massive commitment to push critical race theory in public school classrooms across the country.
The intent of the resolution is to disseminate a study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society … ”
Every “ism” is out to get you, and the union is devoting money from teacher paychecks to make sure you feel threatened.
Part C of the resolution notes: “The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.”
Contrary to those who claim “teaching critical race theory isn’t happening in classrooms,” as stated in a recent NBC headline, the NEA resolution promotes the use of the doctrine in 14,000 school districts across the country.
The union also adopted New Business Item 2, which supports the NEA doing “research” into organizations critical of efforts to infuse critical race theory’s discriminatory practices into elementary and secondary schools across the country.
The item specifically states: “The attacks on anti-racist teachers are increasing, coordinated by well-funded organizations such as the Heritage Foundation. We need to be better prepared to respond to these attacks so that our members can continue this important work.”
Speaking of “well-funded organizations,” total NEA revenue for the 2018-19 fiscal year exceeded $427 million. Together, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have a combined membership of over 4.5 million and a budget of over $550 million each year.
Concern over critical race theory has been directed at the nebulous discipline itself and the implementation of its core beliefs in schools, not against teachers who rightly grapple with difficult issues in the classroom.
Students should learn about the horrors slavery visited on the Africans who were enslaved and their American-born descendants, about the blight of segregation in the South, and the stain of Jim Crow laws. And we must continue to deal strongly with racism and discrimination whenever it emerges, and prosecute it.
But we must not let politics destroy the value of our institutions—which is what critical race theory does. Critical race theory sets out to undermine all our structures.
That is because at its core, critical race theory would upend the principles that set America apart as a nation founded on individual liberty. As a pair of critical race theory architects and a married couple, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic wrote in “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction”:
Not only do parents not want their children to be taught to reject the “foundations of the liberal order” or shun the rationalism born of the Enlightenment, but they do not want their children’s schools and districts to operationalize the theory through practices like segregated “affinity groups,” financing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that separate faculty by race, or compelling teachers and students to believe that individual Americans should be treated unequally according to skin color to forcibly produce equal outcomes.
The most recent example of this leftist mission creep is a slate of critical race theory-based resolutions the National Education Association—the country’s largest teachers union—adopted at its 2021 annual meeting earlier this month. The NEA adopted New Business Item 39, a massive commitment to push critical race theory in public school classrooms across the country.
The intent of the resolution is to disseminate a study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society … ”
Every “ism” is out to get you, and the union is devoting money from teacher paychecks to make sure you feel threatened.
Part C of the resolution notes: “The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.”
Contrary to those who claim “teaching critical race theory isn’t happening in classrooms,” as stated in a recent NBC headline, the NEA resolution promotes the use of the doctrine in 14,000 school districts across the country.
The union also adopted New Business Item 2, which supports the NEA doing “research” into organizations critical of efforts to infuse critical race theory’s discriminatory practices into elementary and secondary schools across the country.
The item specifically states: “The attacks on anti-racist teachers are increasing, coordinated by well-funded organizations such as the Heritage Foundation. We need to be better prepared to respond to these attacks so that our members can continue this important work.”
Speaking of “well-funded organizations,” total NEA revenue for the 2018-19 fiscal year exceeded $427 million. Together, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have a combined membership of over 4.5 million and a budget of over $550 million each year.
Concern over critical race theory has been directed at the nebulous discipline itself and the implementation of its core beliefs in schools, not against teachers who rightly grapple with difficult issues in the classroom.
Students should learn about the horrors slavery visited on the Africans who were enslaved and their American-born descendants, about the blight of segregation in the South, and the stain of Jim Crow laws. And we must continue to deal strongly with racism and discrimination whenever it emerges, and prosecute it.
But we must not let politics destroy the value of our institutions—which is what critical race theory does. Critical race theory sets out to undermine all our structures.
That is because at its core, critical race theory would upend the principles that set America apart as a nation founded on individual liberty. As a pair of critical race theory architects and a married couple, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic wrote in “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction”:
Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.
Not only do parents not want their children to be taught to reject the “foundations of the liberal order” or shun the rationalism born of the Enlightenment, but they do not want their children’s schools and districts to operationalize the theory through practices like segregated “affinity groups,” financing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that separate faculty by race, or compelling teachers and students to believe that individual Americans should be treated unequally according to skin color to forcibly produce equal outcomes.
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